Drip Canon

Artus – National Dance Theatre production

DRIP CANON – How ‘s it going, Heraclitus?

25th October of 20197 pmMÜPA

Trailer:

concert – dance – theatre interference

The concert:

The wavelengths of a tuned, worn-out piano, a melting drop-shaped glacier, the dripping, the hissing steam combine with the flood of voices from a 17-member chorus.

The dance:

The art of T’ai Chi Ch’uan is a basic element of the performance’s choreography and its spirit as well. The pure, sharp confrontation and balance of rest and flow, qualities in opposition. The state of consciousness of a continuous presence in motion.

The theatre:

Already at the start, in the 80s, we produced a show inspired by the 131 remaining sentence fragments of Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher who lived around 600 BC. When I began to think about our current “anniversary, period-summarising” performance, it occurred to me that I have been in continuous conversation with Heraclitus for 30 years. I write my sentences and direct my shows, which seem like fragments of an imaginary dialogue spanning decades. Slowly, I was forced to realise the driving force behind this performance had to be the (now conscious) dialogue in process that summarised the others – my talks with Heraclitus in the language of Artus.

Hence, this performance may seem like a single motion, a single voice, a single image under continuous transformation.

Drip canon

Man is a drop, Mankind is an ocean.

Two drops together is only one drop.

One drop can only be a drop separately, on its own.

A drop in the ocean ceases to be a drop, for then only the ocean exists.

Separateness ceases.

Stream of thought

Thought is like a stream. I squat on the bank and sometimes draw from it. Thought is the water in my hand. Then, I pour it back. Indeed, who has drawn from this water, and who will do so later? They are my companions. My thoughts are not my own. Others think just the same. I know, because I have read my thoughts in books written centuries, millennia ago. They are my companions: Heraclitus, Lao-Tze, Shakespeare, Hamvas, Weöres, Pilinszky, Eco, Mann and many others. I look at the water in my hand, and I think. Thought cannot be preserved. I pour it back into the stream for others to muse upon. The water is not at rest. It is in motion. At times, it evaporates, but it returns. Thoughts have circulated since time immemorial. Sometimes they get stuck in a person. They are expressed.